


minus one

by Verbyna



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Horror, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Southern Gothic, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 22:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12567380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: Eric Bittle is a hard witch to find. Kent Parson is desperate enough to track him down.





	minus one

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to summerfrost and blithelybonny!
> 
> for added spookiness this festive season, look for wind chime clips on youtube and hit play before reading. and heed the tags, y'all. <3

Kent parks his car in front of Bittle’s house and kills the engine. The temperature starts to rise as soon as the A/C cuts off; outside it’s 100 degrees, honeyed light, Georgia sunset like a Hallmark movie. He passed three churches since he got into town.

Zimms is watching Kent like he always watches Kent, pale and clammy and focused, with those old-new eyes of his, so light a blue they’re closer to white. Kent doesn’t turn his head. Zimms will follow him into the house or back to the airport without question.

Kent checks the directions again on his phone. Bittle is a hard man to find, but Kent had the money and the motivation to track him down. It took two years, Kent’s scar getting fainter and fainter until he can barely see it anymore. He looks down at his left palm and back up at the number on the mailbox, then shakes himself and climbs out of the truck.

The house isn’t immediately visible from the road, and when Kent approaches, he’s surprised to see it isn’t particularly big. He was expecting something like a brochure, wraparound porch and two-storey columns, but it’s just old. It looks comfortable: one level, a porch and a jutting front room, white shingle walls. The summer-scorched yard is shaded by huge trees. There’s a tire swing hanging from one of them. Kent’s never seen one in real life before.

He follows the worn path to the stairs and peers into the windows from the porch. If anyone’s home, they can definitely hear his steps creaking on the boards.

“Kenny,” Zimms whispers behind him. “Look at that windchime.”

Kent swallows and turns his head just in time to see Jack blow on a seaglass windchime. It rattles violently, and someone inside starts swearing. “I’m going, I’m going,” someone else shouts in reply, “go finish up at the commissary.” The hell is a commissary, Kent has time to wonder, before the front door opens.

A blond guy who looks around Zimms’ age appears in the doorway. A tiny brunette girl power-walks past him holding a large, misshapen bag. She gives Kent a once-over, but doesn’t glance behind Kent at the source of the noise.

The blond guy, however, is looking right at Zimms.

“Eric Bittle?” Kent asks. Jack stopped blowing on the windchime, but it’s still moving in slow motion. There’s no breeze. Kent _knows_ , but he tries not to get his hopes up.

“Oh my,” Bittle says faintly. “Y’all better come inside.”

 

+

 

“How long has it been?” Bittle asks.

He sat Kent down on a floral couch and poured him a glass of over-sweet lemonade. That was five minutes ago, and he’s been engaged in a staring contest with Zimms ever since. Kent’s on the second refill; he shouldn’t be having this much sugar, but it’s delicious and so cold that both his hands are wet from holding the glass. That is not, however, why they’re shaking.

“Seven.”

“Months?” Bittle asks.

Kent takes another sip and studies the painting on the opposite wall. It’s a pentagram done up in yellow and pink and purple with green and blue around the edges. Kent was told that the rainbow was God’s promise that he wouldn’t flood the world again, and he hopes despite himself. He can’t remember where the limits of his hope used to be, but he still keeps count of how long he’s been pushing them.

“Seven years.” Two thousand, five hundred and sixty-four days. “Give or take.”

“A while,” Zimms adds vaguely. The chimes rattle outside, dreamlike.

Bittle sighs, then leans against the fireplace and picks up a cone-shaped crystal on a thin chain from the mantle. Kent can tell it’s an antique, amethyst - a divination pendulum, so either decorative or an heirloom, considering what he heard about Bittle’s skillset. 

“You already know my name,” Bittle says mildly, like he put an OCCULT PRACTITIONER FOR HIRE sign outside instead of hiding in the middle of nowhere. “What should I call you?”

“I’m Kent. Kent Parson. That’s Jack.” There’s no recognition on Bittle’s face, thankfully.

“You don’t look much alike. Different branches?”

Kent blinks. “What branches?”

Bittle’s hand twitches up nervously, but he catches the crystal in a practiced move. “Branches of the family,” he says. “You’re not gifted, so I assume you’re related if he can see you.”

It’s literally the first time anyone’s told Kent that he isn’t gifted. He smothers the hysterical laughter rising up in his throat, but it comes out as a muted sob. He pulls himself together; shakes his head and holds up his left hand, palm out. Cold water slides down his wrist.

“Blood brothers.”

It’s usually at this point that the practitioner - priest, shaman, witch, therapist - tells him they can’t help him. And he gets it, he does. It was something he did as a kid, desperate and lonely and not considering the repercussions. Even people who don’t believe he’s haunted see that there’s something very wrong here. The people who do see Zimms - shaman, witch - pity him the most.

Bittle’s lips flatten into a line, but he doesn’t throw them out. Kent adds another day to the count.

 

+

 

Zimms was gonna move to the other side of the country after the draft. He’d been getting steadily worse as long as Kent had known him, and that was with Kent there every step of the way. Kent was _terrified_ of what might happen to Zimms out there on his own.

He didn’t know how to give Zimms something to hold on to, so he carved a line into his palm and passed the knife to Zimms. He made stupid, naive promises until they fell asleep hand-in-hand.

It hurt like hell when the EMT pulled them apart. That’s what he told her, anyway, to explain his scream. Zimms watched the gurney roll out, then laid back down on the cold side of the bed, staring staring _staring_ at Kent.

When Kent was drafted a few hours later, Zimms was the first to tell him he’s not what Vegas needed.

Kent had asked for a moment of silence.

 

+

 

Zimms doesn’t normally wander away from Kent. He’s outside now, in the tire swing, looking up through the branches at the cloudless sky. Kent wants to remember this. He wants to remember that not all of Zimms’ time in limbo was something out of a horror movie.

He thinks about all the things Zimms might’ve done, bright and talented Jack, his asshole best friend who used to kiss him when they were drunk, until he feels tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. Zimms has been stuck at eighteen for so long that it makes it crueler, somehow, to see him do something normal. 

“What do you call yourself?” he asks Bittle, turning back to the room.

“A Christian,” Bittle answers from his seat at the desk in the corner. He’s been flipping through books for the past hour. He won’t find anything, Kent knows, but he hasn’t interrupted. It’s almost peaceful.

“And what _are_ you?”

Bittle doesn’t answer right away. Kent gets lost in watching Jack again, so he startles when Bittle says, “A witch. You?”

“I’m a hockey player.”

“What do you call yourself?” Bittle asks quietly.

Kent’s face does something awful, folding in on itself. “I call myself lucky. I shouldn’t, but--” He sweeps a hand at the window, at Zimms, so young and unlikely in the frame. “That’s my best friend. I’ve never had to do anything alone.”

“What if…” Bittle stops and closes his eyes, opens them already looking away from Kent’s naked desperation. “What if I can make him go away, but he won’t cross over?”

Kent stares at Bittle. “What do you mean?”

Bittle swallows and looks down at his books. The pentagram on the wall behind him looks like a crown. Kent wants to remember this, too.

“He can’t cross over. He’s not haunting you, he’s just stuck. If I break the bond…”

“He dies,” Kent says, finally catching up. He whips his head around to look at Zimms, but he’s not in the yard anymore. He’s inside, between the window and the couch, two inches from Kent.

“Please,” Zimms says.

The windchime rattles violently on the porch. Kent tries to lean back, get some space, but Zimms just leans with him, into him, until Kent falls off the couch. Zimms walks through it to get closer to Bitty.

“Please,” he says, “set him free.”

“It’s not your fault,” Bittle says. He sits frozen for a second, then gets up and holds a hand out like a shield. Zimms stops as though he’d actually hit a wall. “Not his fault either.” Bittle spares a look for Kent, who’s cowering on the floor, before he fixes Zimms with his big sad eyes. “And it’s not your choice anymore, sweetheart. Choices are for the living.”

Kent can tell that it cost Bittle to say it, but it doesn’t cushion the blow. Zimms sags against the barrier. Kent doesn’t cry, though he wishes he could; Zimms would just reach for the tears, and then he’d be able to touch the rest of him. The thought makes Kent shake involuntarily.

“Are you scared of him?” Bittle asks Kent, not unkindly. Like a doctor who is about to confirm his worst suspicions.

Kent draws a ragged breath, then another. When he can speak, he says, “I’d like to be alone now.”

 

+

 

“You can use my bedroom,” Bittle says, walking Kent to the back of the house. Kent would rather be outside in the sun, but Bittle had nodded when he’d said _alone_ in a way that made it clear he had a quick fix. He tries to distract himself from the icy draft at his back by looking around.

There are no photos on the walls, he notices. There’s a lot of art, all framed differently, most of it in the same hand as the painting in the living room, but no photos. He can’t tell anything about Bittle from his house other than his occupation: a bowl of salt packets from diners on a side table, ugly candles with no holders and burned matches, sticks of chalk by the handful, dried herbs hanging in bunches from pegs near the ceiling.

“That’s Larissa’s room,” Bittle says, pointing at the door on the left. “You met her when you came in. Don’t go in her room unless you hear weird music outside.” He hesitates for a second, then scrunches up his face. “Or waves. Definitely go to Larissa’s room if you hear waves, and lock the door behind you. Up ahead’s the bathroom, and this is me right here.”

Bittle’s bedroom is painted black. Kent blinks, shocked after all the pale pastels, but when he touches the wall, he figures it’s chalkboard paint. When his eyes adjust to the gloom, he sees more chalk sticks on the floor. The walls are dusty with it. Kent spares a thought for his lungs.

“Is this where you’ll--” _kill Jack,_ he doesn’t say.

“What?” Bittle stops fluffing the pillows and squints at Kent. “Oh, honey, no. It can’t get in. I can’t even _pray_ in here. I got iron under the floorboards, sigils under the paint, and Larissa says - anyway, no. This room is for sleeping.”

Kent lies down and watches Bittle moving around the room, straightening up the mess on the dresser, picking up clothes from the floor. Before he leaves, he draws something on the wall next to the door and blows on it. Kent shivers.

He doesn’t dream, and Jack doesn’t get in. Kent wakes up after sunset, missing him like a limb.


End file.
